


And die of age and not of pain

by handfuloftime



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Inuit Character, M/M, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 07:29:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21454303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handfuloftime/pseuds/handfuloftime
Summary: He catches scraps of sentences: the story they had rehearsed together.We saw many men on foot, all starving…Close enough to the truth as made no difference, Francis had thought, and enough to ensure that the men, whoever they were, would leave and tell others not to bother looking.But he’d never thought that it would be James.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Sir James Clark Ross
Comments: 26
Kudos: 41





	And die of age and not of pain

The wind blows from the north, bringing with it the smell of salt, a memory of blue water carrying over pale rocks and paler sky. Out on the coasts, the ice will be thickening as the weather begins to turn; inland, fish would be running under the thin river ice. Francis hunches his shoulders against a sharper gust of wind, careful not to let the motion interfere with his work. He’s busying himself with trying to shape a better point on the lighter of his spears. The shaft balances across his knees, braced by his left forearm, while he scrapes away at the point. Work better suited for two hands, but doable. And it appears a normal, everyday activity, which is the important thing just now.

He knows when the white men reach them, trekking up from the south into the teeth of the wind, because the camp goes quiet. Not silent, it will never be that, but a sort of expectant hush. A few glances flick his way, subtle enough that the outsiders would never notice. He stays where he is, resists the urge to tug his hood closer around his face. The knife snags against the point; it falls from his hand, and he glowers at the gouge he’s made in the soft antler. As he leans to pick the knife up, he watches the strangers out of the corner of his eye. Voyageurs, he thinks at first, noting their shabby coats and ragged furs. Up from the Hudson’s Bay Company, probably, with something to trade. Only the dream of profit could induce them to come so far.

Then the taller of the two pulls off his hat and rakes a hand through his hair, and Francis feels something half-forgotten catch in his chest, an old pain. Haggard and windburned, but he’d know that profile anywhere. Across a crowded room, on the deck of a distant ship. In the dark.

_James_, he thinks—and stops, knocked off-balance. It’s been a long time since that name had meant Ross and not—well. It’s been a long time since he’s thought of Ross at all.

Francis ducks his head, pulls his hood further over his face, but can’t quite look away. He feels his eyes drawn to Ross like a needle to the Pole. Not the sleek hero he’d left in London, settling contentedly into marriage and retirement, but a greyer, wearier version of the Ross he’d loved first, always tramping back to the ships with a hair-raising story and a brace of scientific discoveries. Ghosts crowd thickly around Francis these days, but this is one he hadn’t looked for.

Tetqataq steps forward to greet the visitors; the other man, a stranger, answers him. While they talk, Ross fidgets with a familiar restless energy: gesturing between Tetqataq and his companion, running a hand through his hair again, rummaging around in the gear on the sledge. He looks around, sharp-eyed, and Francis drops his head quickly and pretends to be working. 

When he ventures to look up again, they’re both following Tetqataq to his tent. Those of the Netsilik who had paused to watch the strangers slowly drift away, and the soft chatter of conversation picks back up. Panatoq whistles as he whittles away at a piece of bone that’s slowly becoming a fishing lure. Someone on the far side of the camp laughs, loud and unexpected. Francis tucks the knife back into his belt. He plants the end of the spear on the stony ground, uses it to lever himself to his feet.

As he walks slowly towards Tetqataq’s tent, he feels the curious glances from the people he passes. He doesn’t meet their eyes. His feet sink into the stones with every step; his breath is tight and painful. 

Sometimes he dreams he’s still hauling a boat, wakes short of breath and exhausted and wondering how much farther he has to go. He feels something similar now. 

Francis stops just outside the tent and settles to the ground, careful to keep his back to the layered hides. Just another fur-clad, indistinguishable shape. Over the rising wind, he can just hear Tetqataq talking. He catches scraps of sentences: the story they had rehearsed together. _We saw many men on foot, all starving…_ Close enough to the truth as made no difference, Francis had thought, and enough to ensure that the men, whoever they were, would leave and tell others not to bother looking.

But he’d never thought that it would be James.

He remembers the morning they’d sailed. Standing on the Greenhithe pier: a grey sky, and gulls crying in the distance. James had clapped him on the shoulder and said, _Good luck, old man,_ and that was it. _Come with us,_ Francis had almost said, _I don’t know how to do this without you._ But even if they both knew it was true, neither of them wanted to hear him say it. So he’d shaken James’s hand, and made a lame joke about the weather at least being an improvement over Blackheath, and so they’d parted.

There’s a part of him, a part he’d though he’d finally buried, that wants to stumble into the tent and pull James into his arms, press his face into James’s neck.

_I was right,_ he’d say, eventually. _I told you: I wasn’t equal to the hardship._

And James would throw a sturdy arm around his shoulders and say, _Tell me what happened, Frank,_ and Francis would say—

He’d say—

He thinks of the wreck of the tuunbaq, crumpled and terrible, bodies strewn around it like flotsam. Poor Edward’s face cobwebbed with gold. James’s voice stripped bare, asking _Are we brothers, Francis?_ And he knows he’ll never find the words.

The cold air stings at his eyes. He can hear James talking, inside the tent, a voice that had once been as familiar as his own. Francis breathes out slowly, wills himself not to turn around.

He can almost entertain the idea of going back with James now; a remnant, maybe, of the time when he would have gone anywhere on earth with him. But he can imagine what it would be like. Weather the court martial and sink into a shabby retirement. Sit down at tables laid with the same plate his men had eaten pieces of each other off of, beside captains whose only thought was of being the first through the Passage. Stand in front of the Admiralty and old John Barrow, in front of Thomas’s wife and Gore’s father and, God save him, Sophia and say, _They’re dead. The ships are gone, and they’re all dead. All but me._

_Why you?_ they would ask. All of them: their Lordships in their gold and glory, the wives and children and friends who had waited for years. The people he passed in the street. _Why are you still alive?_

“He was dying,” Tetqataq says, and the translator echoes him.

And Francis thinks, _God wants you to live_, and wants to weep. _I shouldn’t be alive_, he says to them, says to James, _but I am. If this is my penance, I will pay it._

“What did Francis say?” James asks. There’s an unfamiliar note in his voice, something almost like pain.

Francis shuts his eyes. _I can’t bear this_, he thinks. But he’s borne worse.

He gets to his feet as quietly as he can. He’d meant to walk away at once, but for all his resolution he can’t stop himself from turning and looking back. Through the open tent flap, he can dimly see James—his graying hair, his battered coat, the line of his shoulders. He’s so close. Near enough to reach out and touch. 

Francis turns his back and walks. Jaw set, shoulders braced. Bearing up against a wave of grief and anger and exhaustion that threatens to drive him to his knees. It staggers him, but he keeps walking. Beneath his feet the stones shift and then settle, leaving no trace of which way he’s gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from A.E. Housman, “‘Tis five years since, ‘An end,’ said I”.
> 
> On the Inuit names: Tetqataq and Panatoq were two members of a group of Inuit who encountered a handful of Europeans, presumably survivors of the Franklin Expedition, on King William Island. (David C. Woodman, _Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony_, 2nd ed., 2000).
> 
> Crozier references a December 1844 letter to Ross, on why he didn’t want to be considered for the expedition’s command: “In truth, I sincerely feel I am not equal to the hardship.” (Quoted in Michael Smith, _Captain Francis Crozier: Last Man Standing?_, 2006).


End file.
